Wednesday, 21 September 2016

The Central Bank governor Godwin Emefiele has categorically rejected demands by Kaduna Governor Nasir El-Rufai, Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun and yours truly, for the CBN to reduce interest rates to enable small businesses have access to funds to ease the recession and promote growth.

According to a report in the Vanguard, the Apex bank governor argued that when N1trillion was recently injected by the CBN into the economy or made available to the banks, that rather "than loan this money to the banks or loan them to the consumers, or agriculture and manufacturers, like we said in the communique, we found that those credit went to traders, who used them to demand for foreign exchange, which ended up putting pressure on the foreign exchange market...Subsequent to that, we said since this money wasn’t deployed directly. He further said: “But we said we are not going to allow the banks to really have the cash until they send proposals to the CBN for primary agric projects, new manufacturing projects and other projects that will spur industrial capacity and manufacturing output."Is Godwin truly afraid of the masses' demand for forex or reserving it strictly for the cabal systematically gifted billions at the CBN subsidized rate?

Can an economy come out of recession with such controlling and constricting policies? Can a nation survive under such regimental and biased scrutiny? Can a nation survive if and when small enterprise is intentionally murdered? At what cost will the myopic and cabalophilic Godwin imagine and pretend that he is protecting the Naira?

Highly depressing about Godwin and his Monetary Policy Committee, MPR's choices is his undying support for the cabal. The same Godwin Emefiele has been accused of donating billions of dollars to the cabal with little scrutiny, thereby directly leading to the recession. A recent Reuters review of just three months in 2016 found that under Godwin's policies, a single cabal, Aliko Dangote was gifted as much as $100 billion for his ventures. This would total as much as half a billion dollars for 12 months given to one man in forex subsidy advantage. While the nation was denied such advantage in forex subsidy for refined petrol imports causing hiked pump prices, nationwide inflation and economic collapse.

Why should a handful of cabal be sponsored for their personal profiting projects while the entire nation is crippled? Will the cabal supply their finished goods for free? Is it not these same cabal that sell all finished products and utilities, like cement, telecom data and others, at the world's highest prices, thereby causing crippling hardship for Nigerian masses? How is Dangote's refinery more valuable than several hundreds of mushroom refineries in the Niger Delta if supported and standardized by the government? Have we not learned anything about the true reasons why terror is intractable in Nigeria as the cabal are directly sponsored to grow and be world top billionaires on the backs and from the wealth of the masses?

How long will Nigeria and the Buhari government continue to allow a single man in charge of the Apex bank and his cabal cronies own the nation while everyone else and all small businesses are driven out of existence?

As Jean-Jacques Rousseau said, in the lead-up to the French revolution and war of the French masses against the cabal and oligopolists, "one day the poor will have nothing left to eat but the rich." That day cometh.